Binding Attractions

Chapter 9

Nadiya had to admit, she hadn’t expected the search for Gabriel to take this long. Two months of hacking into government records hadn’t produced anything concrete she could go on. The man was a ghost.

She didn’t like to brag, but Nadiya knew she was damn good at what she did. That was why she had discovered that someone had purposely erased records of her brother in the foster system. And that someone was pretty good, too. She had grudgingly accepted. As far as the world was concerned, Gabriel, her older brother, never existed.

There was no record of a newborn baby boy dumped in the middle of the night at a church door with nothing but a piece of paper with a name scribbled on it. No police record and definitely no record of which foster homes he had been put in or even which elementary school he had attended.

Fortunately for her, whoever had erased her brother wasn’t as good as her. There was always a trace of existence that couldn’t be totally removed. As long as a person was alive, a footprint, a hair, or a nail clip were left somewhere, proving their existence. It took a lot of digging, but Nadiya had found an old photograph of Gabriel at age eight while he was still in the system. It was a picture taken of all the kids kept in that house. Nadiya knew she was assuming a lot, again, but she was ninety percent certain the boy with the copper curls was her brother. There was a resemblance to both her and their mother in that little boy’s face. It also helped that he was the only person in that picture that she couldn’t find a record of.

All she had done after reaching her conclusion was age his face and then she ran the image through facial recognition software.

Of course, it wasn’t an exact science, and she had expected it wouldn’t give her his home address on the first try. But damn, Gabriel was really a f*****g ghost. He had no social media accounts of any kind. But thankfully, he had a medical license. And that came with an ID card from his residency days. Which meant a picture. So, Nadiya had a face and a name. He had changed his name, of course, to Gabriel Hills.

Problem still remained, Gabriel Hills wasn’t easy to find. She couldn’t even locate where he was currently working.

It was all very frustrating, and unfortunately, she had run out of time. Nadiya braced her palm against the outside wall of the little clinic and tried to catch her breath through her clenched teeth.

She was in labor, and there was nothing she could do to stall it. Her baby was ready to pop out. Damn. It hurt like hell, like something was trying to split her body in two. All the hope she held that she would be safe when the moment came blew out of her with her heavy exhale.

With her backpack over left shoulder and a diaper bag with the barest items she could afford to get, hanging from her right, Nadiya knew she had to make it inside the clinic before she gave birth in the alley. But moving her legs was proving to be a mammoth task she wasn’t equipped for.

Just then, like the heavens had taken pity on her, or perhaps her baby, a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform stepped around the corner and came to an abrupt stop in front of Nadiya.

It took the nurse five seconds to recover from her shock and immediately jump into action. She rushed to Nadiya’s side with an assessing professional look in her eyes. “Dear lord, child, what are you doing standing here? This baby is ready to come out.”

Nadiya gave the nurse a breathy chuckle before she groaned in pain as another contraction hit her. The nurse wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already guessed on her own.

The nurse rubbed her back and waited until it passed before she firmly urged Nadiya to walk toward the clinic’s entrance. Every step was like waddling through wet concrete while carrying an elephant on her back. God, Nadiya couldn’t understand why women did this more than once.

“When did your labor start, dear?”

“This morning,” Nadiya answered tiredly. They were almost at the door. Thank goodness. The nurse had a motherly air about her that made Nadiya feel immediately less on the verge of panic. And she had every reason to panic. That feeling she had like her body was trying to split in two had intensified. She was vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers, not forgetting, she still had a killer out hunting for her like a bloodhound. Yes, she definitely had every reason to panic.

By the time they got Nadiya on a bed and told her the baby was crowning, she was ready to pass out. But a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she possessed held her together and focused enough to follow the instructions she was being given.

Minutes that felt more like hours went by before she finally slumped back on the bed with exhaustion. The cries of her little baby girl filled the room as she protested being thrust into the world after nine months of confined warmth.

From the very first moment the nurse put that little girl in her arms, Nadiya knew she would do just about anything to keep that precious angel safe. The world was a dark place, and she knew firsthand just how heartless and greedy some people could get. She made a silent vow to her daughter to do everything within her power to ensure she never faced that darkness. At least, never alone.

Held tightly in her arms, her daughter calmed and stared back at her. For the first time in months, Nadiya thought she saw a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. She only hoped what she thought was light wasn’t actually a twenty ton truck about to run her over.

She knew having a baby just made her life on the run more complicated. And the fact that this was Glisson’s baby just added an ugly twist to everything. She would never tell him about her daughter, but unless the man had cotton balls for brains, he could count and conclude. Nadiya, of course, would never give up her child, even if he figured it out. He was a sperm donor, and that was the end of the story.

And he was also a killer, still trying to kill her. Nadiya knew she would need more than just the fancy footing she had been doing to stay alive going forward.

But for just a few seconds, she wanted to look at her daughter and pretend life was beautiful and safe.

“Riona,” she murmured to her little girl, the name she had chosen.

Moments later, the nurse was back at her side and announced she would now be moved to a room.

“I will also bring over the paperwork you need to fill out,” the nurse said with a smile.

Nadiya forced a smile onto her face and nodded. Of course, there were records that needed to be filled. But she had no intention of sticking around and exposing Riona and herself any further.

Twenty minutes later, when Nadiya was left alone with her baby, she gingerly got out of bed, grabbed her bags and walked out of the clinic.

Her legs shook every step of the way and every cell in her body begged her to just lie down and sleep. But Nadiya couldn’t do that. Not if she wanted to see her little girl turn one next year.